Sanctuary Of The Sacred Flame

Spiritual practice is essential to the Johannite tradition, and this book will show you how to begin. Using the framework of the Logos Service, the quintessential Johannite practice, you will learn the basic techniques of many different types of prayer, meditation, contemplation, asceticism, and esoteric practice from a Johannite perspective. Whether you attend mass regularly at a Johannite parish, or if you live far from one, you will find a practice or two that will help guide you on the path to Gnosis.

A fascinating examination of the role of lighting in ancient Egyptian culture Artificial lighting is one of the earliest tools used by humans. By the time we began to paint cave walls, we were producing lamps consisting of an illuminant, a fat or oil, and a wick, such as a strip of fabric or a piece of reed or wood. Drawing on archaeological, textual, and iconographic sources, Meghan Strong examines the symbolic part that artificial lighting played in religious, economic, and social spheres in ancient Egyptian culture. From the earliest identifiable examples of lighting devices to the infiltration of Hellenistic lamps in the seventh century BC, Sacred Flames explores the sensory experience of illumination in ancient Egypt, the shadows, sheen, color, and movement that resulted when lighting interacted with different spaces and surfaces. The soft, flickering light from lamps or hand-held lighting devices not only facilitated the navigation of darkened environments, such as allowing workers to see in underground chambers in the Valley of the Kings, or served as temple offerings, but also impacted upon the viewer’s perception of a space and the objects within it. Sacred Flames illustrates the active role that lighting played in Egyptian society, providing a richer understanding of the symbolic and social value of artificial light and the role of lighting in ritual space and performance in ancient Egyptian culture, while serving as a case study of the broader impact of artificial light in the ancient world.

From the creator of the popular blog The Monsters Know What They’re Doing comes a compilation of villainous battle plans for Dungeon Masters. In the course of a Dungeons & Dragons game, a Dungeon Master has to make one decision after another in response to player behavior—and the better the players, the more unpredictable their behavior! It’s easy for even an experienced DM to get bogged down in on-the-spot decision-making or to let combat devolve into a boring slugfest, with enemies running directly at the player characters and biting, bashing, and slashing away. In The Monsters Know What They’re Doing, Keith Ammann lightens the DM’s burden by helping you understand your monsters’ abilities and develop battle plans before your fifth edition D&D game session begins. Just as soldiers don’t whip out their field manuals for the first time when they’re already under fire, a DM shouldn’t wait until the PCs have just encountered a dozen bullywugs to figure out how they advance, fight, and retreat. Easy to read and apply, The Monsters Know What They're Doing is essential reading for every DM.

Attempting to restore subtlety and nuance to the study of southern religion, The Sacred Flame of Love ranges across the entire nineteenth century to chronicle the evolution of the institutions, theology, and social attitudes of Georgia Methodists in light of such phenomena, trends, and events as slavery, class prejudice, republicanism, population growth, economic development, sectional politics, war, emancipation, and urban growth. In connecting Methodist history with the larger social transformation of nineteenth-century Georgia, Christopher H. Owen uncovers a story of considerable complexity and variety. Because Georgia Methodists included people from every social class, few generalizations apply properly to all of them. For many years they were loosely united by common adherence to the ideals of Wesleyan evangelicalism, but economic and political developments would gradually accentuate Methodist social divisions and weaken even this bond. Indeed, deviating far from the conception of unchanging and asocial southern religion often held by scholars, Owen sees both church and society undergoing enormous change in the nineteenth century.

An Egyptologist who reads Egyptian hieroglyphics firsthand examines the esoteric tradition of Egypt in remarkable detail, exploring the dimensions of the language, cosmology, and temple life to show that a sacred mandate--the transformation of the human condition into its original cosmic substance--formed the foundation of Egypt's endeavors and still has great relevance today.

A guide to the ancient Olympics features a program of events, transportation options as provided by passenger ferry and ox cart, accommodations, and dining options, all as they would have appeared in 338 BC in the spectacle's early days.